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Chiara String Quartet to perform first concert as UNL ensemble
BY JEFF KORBELIK / Lincoln Journal Star
Thursday, Oct 06, 2005 - 11:51:36 pm CDT

The Chiara String Quartet owes its award-winning sound to — believe it or not — Grand Forks, N.D. Fresh out of Juilliard, the foursome kicked off its career with a two-year rural residency in that Midwestern community.

“We had a lot of time to sit down and work,” cellist Gregory Beaver said. “Not just on the music, but on the craft of playing together.”

By the time the Chiara String Quartet returned to New York for a two-year postdoctorate residency at Juilliard, the group had several performances under its belt as well as some awards, including first prize at the 2002 Fischoff Competition.

“It made it easier for us to blend into the scene,” violist Jonah Sirota said.

The foursome, which also includes violinists Rebecca Fischer and Julie Yoon, believes the next three years in another Midwestern town will further their development even more.

The Chiara Quartet, which won hearts and minds at the 2004 Meadowlark Music Festival, accepted an invitation from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Music to become artists in residence.

On Sunday, the public will get its first chance to hear the quartet as a faculty ensemble. The group — which takes its name from an Italian word meaning clear, pure or light — will perform works by Mozart, Shostakovitch and Beethoven at Kimball Recital Hall.

John Richmond, School of Music director, said Chiara’s arrival is helping put Nebraska on the chamber music map.

Not that the school was behind the times. UNL already boasts one of the nation’s top ensembles in the Moran Woodwind Quintet, and its brass quintet is making strides in its second year.

“I think with (Chiara) coming out of Juilliard you have to be optimistic,” Richmond said of the potential. “We’re certainly delighted to have them here with us.”

The Chiara String Quartet is found in a two-desk, one-piano office in the basement of Westbrook Music Building, where members each work with various chamber student ensembles and give lessons. They are six weeks into their new residency and so far are loving the position.

“This is the first real (academic) job for us,” Sirota said Wednesday morning shortly after rehearsing a piano trio, one of 27 student chamber ensembles now on campus.

“(The residency) will allow us to pursue the direction we want to go and not take everything that comes along to pay the rent,” he added.

During Sunday’s concert, patrons will hear a sound that Chiara has spent five years developing. They met and formed while all four were graduate students at Juilliard.

“We try to find the most fundamental essence of a piece,” Beaver said. “We usually know what it is. It’s what we hear in our heads when we walk to lunch after work.”

Sirota said another goal is to make the music accessible to the audience. The group often will talk — not lecture — about a piece prior to performing it.

“We put up no barriers,” he said. “We want people who have never heard us or a chamber ensemble or even classical music to come listen.

“We want to show people what the music means to us.”

Reach Jeff Korbelik at 473-7213 or jkorbelik@journalstar.com.

If you go

What: Chiara String Quartet

When: 3 p.m. Sunday

Where: Kimball Recital Hall, 11th and R streets

Tickets: $5, $3 for students and senior citizens at the door